In 2016, Fife was said to be the happiest place to live in Scotland, at least according to the Bank of Scotland Happiness Index. But it may not be quite so happy for a man who was recently overpaid nearly £300,000 by Fife Council and now has to pay it back (that’s Fife House, North Street, Glenrothes, Fife, Scotland, the seat of Fife Council, in the picture). According to Irish Legal News yesterday (also here and here):

Fife Council, in Scotland, was supposed to pay the man £59.95 a week, but accidentally paid £59,395 per week instead – and didn’t notice until around £297,000 was paid out. … Most of the cash has been recovered and a repayment plan has been put in place to recover the remaining sum, around £12,000.

It was a monumental banking blunder from an administrative worker at the council who made a “keying error“. This resulted in five massive weekly overpayments during July and August, before council officials discovered the error. This is a spectacular example of a butterfly-effect typo; and Irish Legal News has another example today: a judge calculating a half-billion dollar damages award typed $107 million rather than $107 thousand into his calculator.…

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Last month, English golfer Tommy Fleetwood came twelfth in The Open golf championship. Earlier this month, Thomas Fleetwood had the St£120,000 (US$154,480, €133,000) winnings deposited in his bank account. There doesn’t seem anything exceptional in that story, so let’s try again. Last month, British golfer Tommy Fleetwood came twelfth in The Open golf championship. Earlier this month, Florida golfer Thomas Fleetwood had the St£120,000 winnings deposited in his bank account. That’s right – golf’s authorities lodged the winnings to the bank account of the wrong golfer. One of Thomas’s golf friends posted a picture of the lodgement record on twitter. And Thomas duly repaid the wayward deposit. But he would not have been able to keep it anyway, had he been minded to. As I have said before on this site, you can’t keep the proceeds of a bank error in your favour; and, if you do, you probably won’t be able to get out of jail free (see also here, here, here, here, and here). So, Thomas would have had to give back the winnings to golf’s authorities; and they in turn will no doubt pay them on to Tommy, if they have not already done so.…

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In the board-game Monopoly, one of the cards that you can get by landing on ‘Chance’ is ‘Get out of jail free‘. If you are sent to jail during the game, you can use the card to ‘escape’ immediately, without having to cool your heels for the three turns otherwise mandated by the rules. It is as about a useful guide for life as the its fellow Monopoly ‘Community Chest’ card, which tells you that you can keep the proceeds of a bank error in your favour. Unfortunately, you can’t; and spending it is straightforward theft, as is well illustrated by a story in today’s Irish Independent:

Jail for ‘flabbergasted’ teen who succumbed to temptation after €20k was mistakenly lodged in his account

Karl Smith was due €200

A teenager who had “an incredible temptation presented to him” two days after his 19th birthday when his former employer mistakenly lodged almost €20,000 into account has been jailed for theft. …

Judge Melanie Greally sentenced Smith to four years in prison with the final two years suspended.

There is more on this case here, here, here and here. This is not the only time this kind of thing has happened, though it certainly seems to be the most unlucky defendant.…

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